“I’m having an existential crisis” Mallard told the small man in half-rim glasses.
  “You’re a duck. You can’t have an existential crisis” he sighs and reclines further into his leather armchair.
  “You keep telling me that,” Mallard sighed, “but really… I find myself sitting on the pond at night, unable to sleep… trying to understand what it is to be a duck.”
  “You swim about… you occasionally fly… you eat bread” the man says and stares at his watch.
  Dr Manson liked to stare at his watch.  Mallard was always unsure whether it was because Dr Manson regretted agreeing to see him or because it was just such a nice watch.  Mallard liked to think it was the latter as it was less of an assault on his ego.  Being a duck his ego was always hanging by a thread due to the enormous pressures of conformity placed upon him.  It never paid to stand out on the pond… the other ducks would either drown you or people would take pity on you and throw bread to you.  Mallard hated it when people threw bread to him.
  “My point is this…” Mallard said, adjusting himself on the couch, folding his legs a little tighter underneath him, “I read Darwin… and I’m thinking to myself… We ducks are making a mockery of evolution…”
  Dr Manson slowly sagged.
  “We could be so much more and yet we keep ourselves down… What genetic traits are we actually pushing here? The ability to quack loudest at a pensioner eating a sandwich? The one who can eat the piece of bread off another duck’s back the quickest? This is not really survival of the fittest… It’s just favouring volume and twitch-reflexes over any kind of deeper duck thought.”
  Dr Manson got up and walked out of the room.
  “Fuck your mother” Mallard shouted after him.

  “Do you see what I mean?” asked Mallard after recounting the day’s therapy to his girlfriend Beatrice.
  “Quack” said Beatrice.
  Mallard struck Beatrice hard around the beak with his wing. It was a reflex reaction and he instantly knew he’d done wrong… but it was already too late.
  “Quack” Beatrice said, stunned, as she backed away from him, cowering behind her wing.
  “Oh god… what have I done?” cried Mallard, his wings holding his head. “I’m so sorry… I… It’s just… I have no excuses… but… you… you know I can’t handle it when you just quack at me like that… I know it’s not your fault… but…”
  Tears began to drip down Beatrice’s face as she turned away from Mallard. She had told herself this would be the last time. She slowly reached down and took hold of the corner of the nest she and Mallard had built together. Slowly she began to drag it behind her as she walked to her sister’s patch of reeds and out of Mallard’s life forever.
  “Why… why is this happening?” Mallard yelled upwards, his beak opening in a primal scream of frustration and sadness.
  No answer came. Mallard knew it wouldn’t. He alone among the ducks was an atheist.
 
  Mallard sat on the gently rippling pond, slowly paddling himself round in the reflected circle of the full moon. The tip of his wing seemed to be disappearing into a pool of molten silver every time it brushed the surface. He knew that, somewhere, Beatrice was sobbing into the nest, the two small eggs yet to release two ducklings that would grow up filled with disappointment in their father.
  “Is this the cost of evolution?” Mallard asked himself aloud. “Did the first monkey-man that learned to speak have to make fake monkey screeches in order to fit in?” He sighed like only a sad duck could. “I bet it didn’t help him with the monkey-women… It’s not like he’d have been able to woo them with his conversational skills… and I bet he was an ugly bastard… because nature likes to fuck with us.”
  “Quack” came a voice from the darkness.
  “Hey Ted.” Mallard couldn’t hide the sadness from his voice.
  Ted, his best friend since they both had an egg-tooth, slowly swam towards him. Mallard paused his circling and slowly turned to face his friend.
  “I’m guessing you heard by now…” Mallard said.
  Ted swam up and struck Mallard hard around the beak.
  “Quack.”
  “I’m guessing by that you’re calling me a wanker?” asked Mallard.
  Ted struck him again.
  “Quack.”
  “You’re just saying ‘quack’… I can’t understand the subtleties… if you’re expecting me to say anything you can understand… Oh fine… Quack.”
  Ted turned his head down, buried his beak beneath the water and then flicked it violently up.
  “Ow…” said Mallard as the filthy water struck his corneas. “Look… I know… I was a prick… but… I can’t take it back… and she’s better off without me… She can start again… with someone who can understand what the fuck ‘quack’ means.”
  Ted tapped his wing against his chest.
  “You?... wait… what? Are you saying…”
  “Quack.”
  “I’m going to fucking drown you” Mallard shouted.
  “Quack” said Ted and swam away.
  “Ugh… it’s not worth it… What would it really achieve?” sighed Mallard.
  He returned to swimming in slow circles.

  “The next day I went to talk to her and found Ted there… I remember buying some petrol and… well… I think I’m going to have to turn myself in to the police” Mallard told a disinterested Dr Manson.